You haven't come this far to fall off the earth
by Amberdreams
Summary: Dean reluctantly agrees to do the research for a change, while Sam goes hunting for a shapeshifter/skinwalker with John, in a role reversal that does not end well for anyone. Pre series. Sam is nearly 17, Dean is 21. Warnings: Graphic torture, mentions (not graphic) of child abuse, non sexual. Written for Hurt Comfort Bingo postage stamp.


**Summary: **Dean reluctantly agrees to do the research for a change, while Sam goes on a hunt for a skinwalker with John, in a role reversal that does not end well for anyone.

Title from Jack & the Mannequin – Swim.

**Acknowledgements**: Many thanks to verucasalt123 for such a swift beta and helpful suggestions. All errors and typos are mine, the Winchesters, sadly, are not.

**Written for H/C Bingo postage stamp – February Challenge**

**Prompts: **septicaemia/infected wounds; corporal punishment; phobias; wild card – captivity.

**Warnings**: Graphic torture, mentions (no graphic) of child abuse, not sexual.

* * *

**You haven't come this far to fall off the earth**

**Oxbow, Montana, April 2000**

Dean was woken abruptly when a strong hand gripped his shoulder and shook him violently. A harsh voice was shouting at him, seemingly consumed by a great rage at something he had done, though he had no memory of any (recent) misdemeanour warranting such a reaction. He didn't think he'd deflowered any virgins lately, or banged anyone's wife…not that he knew of, anyway.

His head felt muzzy and confused, and at first he couldn't make head nor tail of what the voice was saying. When the words finally arranged themselves into the proper order, he was still none the wiser, not least because whatever script the guy was reading from sounded like a character escaped from a Salem witch trial re-enactment.

"You recalcitrant miscreant! Evil devil spawn! You have changed your form again, in spite of everything we have discussed. How many times must I chastise you for your disobedience to God's natural laws? You are an obscenity! An inexorable blasphemy, an abomination …"

Dean opened his eyes, then wished he hadn't. The sharp nose belonging to the owner of the voice was about an inch from his own. The man's mouth was stretched wide with shouting and his eyes wide and staring. Spittle was hitting Dean's face as the stranger continued to rant and rave. Dean didn't have a clue who this guy was, but he looked certifiable.

Dean was slowly realising his predicament was worse than merely being yelled at by a lunatic who also seemed obsessed with touching him up. What the hell? He twisted to try and escape the clammy pawing hands of the stranger but found that movement was nigh on impossible. His naked feet barely touched the floor, just the tips of his toes gaining any purchase on what felt like cold concrete, while he was just starting to register the burning ache in his wrists where they were taking most of his weight. He was cuffed and hanging from some sort of system of chains, suspended from the ceiling. Like a dumb animal in a slaughter-house, or worse, a piece of meat in a clichéd BSDM porn movie.

His brain seemed to be lagging a decade behind events, and he struggled to catch up. The last thing he remembered was that hot chick, Maggie whatshername, leading him down some rickety dark steps to rescue her brother. When the pretty brunette had approached him in the bar, he'd thought at the time perhaps he should've left a message for Dad or Sammy, but Maggie had been so distraught he'd allowed her to virtually drag him out into the cold night. Her urgency had made no concessions for leaving notes.

She'd led him down a dark tree-lined road to a big old house on the edge of town where she said her brother was being held captive by their uncle. Huh. He'd told himself that wicked pervy uncles with cellars converted into torture chambers for orphaned children had sounded like a lot more fun than the boring skinwalker or possible shapeshifter that Dad had been hunting. Especially since a) Dad had taken Sammy along instead of Dean, and b) with a young attractive woman like Maggie thrown into the mix. Now Dean was forced to acknowledge that he might have been thinking more with his downstairs than his upstairs brain …

But they'd got her brother out, hadn't they? He distinctly remembered Maggie's grateful smile, and how she'd taken his face in her hands and kissed him. In fact, that kiss was the actual last thing he remembered…Goddamit. She'd whammied him with a drugged kiss like that Poison Ivy chick in Batman!

Speaking of drugs…what fucked up shit was this crazy dude on to be messing with Dean's privates like this? And come to that, where the hell were his clothes?

"I know your game, Isaac Harrison. You think to tempt me with this pretty body, those rosy girlish lips and beautiful taut muscles, but my will is too strong for your lecherous wiles."

Dean swivelled his hips in vain when the stranger's hand skittered over his genitals again. He grunted in pain when the guy got a good grip and yanked on the family jewels, which distracted him somewhat from the sense of outrage he'd been feeling at the whole rosy lips comment. It was around about then that Dean realised that a grunt was all he was going to be able to manage, as his mouth had been very effectively stoppered with some sort of skanky gag.

Fuck. This was just peachy. Strung up six ways from Sunday, naked as a jaybird with no sign of any pleasure to go with the pain; now this lunatic was saying something about _punishment _and Dean couldn't even let loose the mouthful of obscenities the freak deserved. Really, could things get any worse?

Dean should've know better than t ask such a question, even in his head. Crazy guy momentarily disappeared from view, and Dean heard scrabbling and clanking behind him, as if a scrap yard the size of Uncle Bobby's was being rummaged through. Then Crazy reappeared in front of Dean, holding something behind his back. The man's face appeared calmer now, as if a decision had been made. Whatever it was, Dean didn't like the look of it. He liked it even less when Crazy started talking again, even though he seemed more under control now - his voice was well modulated and had taken on an almost soothing quality which belied the words being spoken.

"Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell."

Dean's slow brain had eventually concluded that this man must be Maggie's evil step uncle – if any of that conniving bitch's story had been true, since she seemed to have brought him here simply to hang him out to dry in her brother's place. Crazy Uncle brought his hand out from behind his back with a flourish, to show Dean exactly what he was talking about. A cat o'nine tails. A shiver that wasn't entirely due to the chilly air ran through Dean's naked body as the man ran the handle of the cat down his chest from nipple to groin. Disturbingly, the whip looked like it had seen use before. Its rope fibers were stained dark, each thin tail woven with silver wire that glinted dully in the dim light. Shit, that thing was made to cut.

"I've warned you too many times, boy. Do you think I get any pleasure out of this?"

The lascivious glint in Crazy's eye gave the lie to his words, and Dean would have loved to have called him on it, particularly when Crazy's hand slid down between Dean's legs again and fondled the young hunter's flaccid cock and shrinking balls. Fucking hypocritical as well as certifiable then. Dean tried to kick out at the guy, who shrieked like a girl and backed off, but before Dean could celebrate this tiniest of victories, there was a rattle of chains off to the side.

That was when he discovered that his ankles were cuffed as well as his wrists. His legs were wrenched apart along with his arms and now he understood the purpose of that seeming jumble of chains above his head. He was attached to some kind of pulley system that now had him spread eagled in mid air, his body stretched into an X-shape.

Dean didn't have more than a second or two to adjust to this new discomfort before the first lash landed across his bare buttocks and he was yelling into the gag.

Crazy was a craftsman. Blows rarely landed in the same place twice in a row, so it was hard to focus on blocking out the pain, never knowing where the next lash would alight as Crazy worked the whip up and down Dean's back. After the first surprised shout, Dean had bitten down into the gag and hoped to endure in silence, but soon the pain became too much, and he found himself moaning and crying out randomly, half glad of the obstruction in his mouth that prevented him from pleading with Crazy-cakes to stop.

He wasn't sure how long the punishment went on because after a few more countless strokes, he mercifully blacked out.

0x0x0x0

**Oxbow Forest Reserve, Montana**

Sam wished he'd never badgered Dad into letting him come along on this stupid hunt instead of Dean. He couldn't remember now why it had seemed so important that he prove himself on this hunt - just because Dad had said it was only a two man job, and had, as always, turned automatically to Dean. He should have stuck to the research Dad had originally asked him to do instead of forcing a sulky Dean into it, and they wouldn't now be in this predicament. It was all his fault.

Sam pulled on Dad's arm where it lay heavy round his shoulder, and braced himself. Thighs straining, he stood up, grunting as nearly all of John's weight sagged against him. John mumbled something unintelligible as Sam half carried, half dragged his Dad towards the pickup. At least they hadn't gotten too far from the truck before the large and hairy _something_ had hit them. Well, it had hit Sam first, before Dad had thrown himself into its path. Everything had become a little unclear to Sam after that; a confusing flurry of movement and fearsome growling in the darkness under the trees until the loud percussion of a single gunshot had brought an ominous silence.

Sam had groped around in the dark until his shaking hand had found his flashlight. He staggered to his feet, shining the beam around the clearing. The light found the creature first, and Sam was not too blinded by the blood running freely down his face to recognize the irony. It was a grizzly bear, nothing supernatural at all. Just a sad, lonely, probably half starved creature defending its territory. Perhaps a little more vigorous research would have led them to that conclusion before they'd ventured out here into the dark looking for some kind of shifter, perhaps not. But Sam thought he'd have found the clues if he hadn't been so focused on proving he was as good as Dean.

Sam's light found their father next, a crumpled heap on the ground next to the animal he'd killed. It was too dark to properly assess John's injuries; the best thing to do was to get Dad back to the cabin and to Dean. Dean would know if a trip to the hospital was necessary or not.

At nearly seventeen, Sam was still skinny as a lathe, even though he'd shot up to tower over his big brother. In a fight, he could use his long levers and wiry strength, and he was faster than Dean when it came to running, but his brother could still put him on his ass at the drop of a hat. Sam longed for some of Dean's solid muscle now, as he manhandled their father into the shotgun seat. And he was missing more than Dean's physical presence. Although Sam would never have admitted it, Dean's quiet confidence in a crisis always gave him courage.

John seemed to be totally out of it, though Sam could hear his father's breath rasping in his throat. John's head lolled back against the seat as Sam gunned the pickup's engine, gravel spraying as Sam sped as fast as he could back to the lonely cabin they were squatting in.

Sam was out of the car and leaping up the porch steps two at a time, yelling for Dean almost before he'd put the handbrake on, leaving the engine running. The cabin was empty. Sam knew it as soon as he burst through the door, though he still ran through every room in search of Dean. The place had that deserted feel, where all the spaces resonate too loud. He realized belatedly that there had been no sign of the Impala out front.

"Dammit Dean! Would it kill you to stay put for one freaking night?" Sam spun around in an agony of indecision. The cabin where they were squatting was not salubrious. Its running water was from a pump out the back and needed boiling before drinking, there was no cell phone reception, no television, no sanitation. John had said this was a simple case, they wouldn't be there long enough for the lack of amenities to matter. Seems he was wrong about that.

Sam's legs stiffened and he might as well have taken root as an agony of indecision swept over him.

He started as the cabin door, caught in a gust of wind, slammed back against the wall, rattling him out of the funk he'd been sinking into. Maybe he could do this himself, maybe he could stitch Dad up, avoid going to the hospital… He grabbed Dad's duffle and emptied it out, searching for the med-kit. Tearing the suspiciously light bag open, he found any alternative action had been taken out of his hands. He stared at the depleted contents and remembered Dad saying something about needing to do a drugstore run after their last hunt. Obviously that hadn't happened, as their supplies were nearly all gone.

Hospital it was then.

Shit. Sam felt his breathing quicken and his heartbeat speed up. He knew it was irrational, especially in their line of work, but he just hated hospitals with a passion. He clenched his hands into fists until he felt his fingernails cutting into his palms, trying to ground himself. You'd have thought being a Winchester he'd be so used to the places that one more trip wouldn't faze him, but it was the same very time. The minute he crossed the threshold into those puke-pastel hallways with their too bright lights and insidious anti-septic smells mixed with death and piss, Sam would be fighting to breathe. It didn't matter why he was there, the effect was always immediate and debilitating.

God, he hated himself for being so weak but he so wished Dean was here. Having his big brother around helped him cope. Dean always knew when Sam was distressed, like he had a built in Sam-o-meter that switched him into competent-big-brother mode, distracting Sam with teasing and jokes, or soothing him with a casual arm slung round his shoulder. Sam cursed the lack of cell coverage in this godforsaken place as he ran back out to the pickup. Contacting his errant brother would have to wait until he got Dad to the community hospital in Portishall, some twenty miles down the mountain from Oxbow. He slammed the stickshift into gear and threw the four wheel drive truck back down the mountain track, thankful for once that this wasn't the Impala. Her suspension would have struggled at this speed over the rough ground. Dean's voice was in his head as his gripped the steering wheel tight.

_No time for pussying around, Sammy, just get this done_.

0x0x0x0

Dean woke up flat on his face this time; his front freezing from the chill of the damp concrete floor, his back blazing in contrast. A small moan escaped from between dry lips and he realized the gag had gone.

Memories of before the flogging were coming back to him in small vicious flashes.

Maggie Harrison leading him down some unlit wooden steps into a cellar. A figure hanging, wrapped in chains; a boy, younger than him and skinny, butt naked like he was now. Maggie telling him this was her brother, Isaac, and begging Dean to help get the boy down and free him from his chains. Like a fool, he'd done it. Then the moment the kid was free, Maggie had done something to him…Dean's hand moved shakily to touch his lips, chains rattling as they dragged across the floor. He was still securely cuffed, then. Yeah that's right, he'd been here before. She'd kissed him, must have had something on her lips because everything got fuzzy round the edges right after that. Fuck, seriously. He'd thought that shit only happened in comic books. He vaguely remembered a debate between the siblings going on as he was sinking helpless to the floor - something about dosing him with tranquillisers their uncle used to keep Isaac subdued and to stop the kid…aw, shit. To stop him _changing_.

Adrenaline shot through Dean as he finally remembered everything. The kid he'd been suckered into rescuing was a fucking shifter! Isaac had torn off his own skin and morphed right in front of Dean's blurring gaze; and the worst thing was, the kid had shifted to look exactly like Dean. Fuck and double fuck. How would Sam and Dad know he was missing if Isaac was walking around wearing his face?

Groaning, Dean tried to push up and get his knees underneath him, only to slide back to the floor in a noisy jangle of chains as his trembling limbs failed him. Pain washed over him in a burning wave.

Fuck. Crazy-cakes had really done a number on him with that whip. The dull glow of a moment ago had turned to liquid fire, running from his shoulders to the backs of his knees, a pain so incandescent it momentarily took his breath away. He rested his cheek on the cold ground, just for a moment, just while he learned how to breathe again. Then he'd get up, break out of these cuffs somehow and find his way home.

He stared blankly at the meager patch of pale grey-blue light that was filtering through some sort of grill that must lead to the outside, making a glistening square on the wet grey concrete. He was too tired to think about what that could mean. His eyelids fluttered closed.

Yeah, he should rest. Just for a minute.

0x0x0x0

"I'm sorry."

The voice disturbing him this time was soft, feminine and gentle, and Dean didn't want to open his eyes. He just wanted to take a moment to bask in the tender attention as the voice whispered to him, and a soft hand wiped at his face with soothing motions. But he knew any sense of comfort was just a fantasy, because he recognised that voice. It was Maggie. Though why she was still here was a mystery.

Dean's eyes flew open and he snatched the girl by one slender wrist. She gasped in shock as he gripped her so tightly he could feel the bones grating together under his fingers. Not normally vindictive, Dean couldn't help feeling a grim satisfaction at the thought of giving her a little pain after what she'd done, though it was hard for him to maintain any pressure on her writst when he felt so weak.

"Get me out of here," he demanded, his voice hoarse and barely above a whisper. Maggie tried to pull away, shaking her head.

"I can't," she said, keeping her voice low and glancing behind her, on edge. "You have to stay here so Isaac has time to get as far away as he can. Uncle Walter has this town tied up so tight, nobody here would help us. They all agree with our uncle that Isaac is an abomination, just like our mother, just because..."

"Because he's a shapeshifter." Dean said, trying to supress the tiny thread of sympathy he was feeling. It wasn't that difficult to do, as even lifting his head the few inches he had managed to look into Maggie's face was sending waves of excruciating agony down his back. He tried to focus. This was important. Sammy always said you have to have all the facts before you could make a judgement…and he had been left to do the research, after all.

"Wha..what happened to your mother?"

"After our father died, she moved back to Oxbow because me and Isaac were both small and she needed support, but Uncle Walter beat her all the time. Said it was for her own good, that he would beat the ability to change out of her." Maggie's tone was bitter. "He did that alright. One night he came back from church with a silver candlestick, hit her over and over with it until she never moved again. Then he turned his attention on Isaac. I was fourteen and Isaac was ten. That was seven years ago…

I'm sorry he whipped you so hard, I didn't think he'd be so angry this time. I…"

"Margaret Harrison. I told you to stay out of here, I won't have you molly coddling your brother. A foul sinner such as he does not deserve kindness."

The charming, sister-murdering Walter DeLuise had returned. Maggie pulled out of Dean's feeble grasp and moved away from the pallet on which he was lying, head and feet dangling over the edges where it was too short for him. Crazy Uncle Walt must have dumped him there after he'd lost consciousness; he didn't remember. Dean supposed he should be grateful Walt had at least left him on his stomach as his back was on fire. And he was still naked, so he guessed being face down spared his blushes. In other circumstances he'd have been happy to be naked with a pretty girl, but somehow having half the skin flayed off his back after being shafted by that same pretty girl was an even more effective cock-block than Sammy's best bitch face.

He was shocked out of his wandering thoughts when Uncle Walter prodded his wounded back.

"Ow! Fuck, gerroff me you crazy fucker!"

Dean's efforts to roll out of reach failed, and his outburst evidently riled Walter up again.

"Such profanity has no place in this house," Walter DeLuise said, and he gestured to Maggie. "Fetch me the bridle, Margaret."

"Uncle, please," she protested, in vain. DeLuise merely frowned and waited with his hand out until she acquiesced and handed over the strange looking metal device. It didn't look like any bridle Dean had ever seen before, but he didn't have to wait long to find out what it was for. Walter seized him by the short hair on top of his head and wrenched him back, so that his mouth was forced open.

Then DeLuise snapped the hinged black metal cage into place around Dean's skull. A flat spiked plate was shoved inside Dean's open mouth, resting on his tongue, so that when the device was snapped shut and locked, he couldn't move his tongue or speak without the spikes driving into his flesh. Eyes wide with utter shock, Dean moaned faintly and tried to swallow past the painful obstruction, as his own blood slid warm and wet down his throat. When he instinctively raised a hand to pull at the metal cage, Walter strode over to the winches and with a couple of turns of one of the wheels, wrenched Dean's arms away from his body so he was once again partly suspended in mid air. At least this time most of his weight was carried by his lower body where he was half sitting, half kneeling on the pallet, but with his arms outstretched, the constriction on his chest was unpleasant and made breathing an effort. The metal cage thing made his head feel too heavy for his neck, and he struggled fiercely to hold his head up. He didn't want this lunatic to think Dean Winchester was bowing under pressure.

Even when said lunatic's next words reminded Dean that the guy had no idea who he was.

"Isaac, Isaac," if Dean hadn't known better he would have thought that was a note of regret in Walter DeLuise's voice. "You should know by now, your filth is not acceptable here. This is a God-fearing house, and as I am his divine representative, you should show me every respect."

Dean was almost too preoccupied with adjusting to his new predicament to pay attention to what mad Uncle Walt was up to now, but after a few minutes, his brain kicked back in and he started paying closer attention. He really needed to stay alert if he was going to get out of here alive.

"Since you clearly have not yet learned self control, this scold's bridle will have to impose the discipline you lack."

There was a pause as Walter moved behind Dean. He hated that he couldn't see what the man was doing; it made him feel even more vulnerable.

"This is very curious. You see, Margaret, how Isaac is not healing as quickly as usual? Here, he is still bleeding after several hours," Walter followed up his observation with another agonising prod to one of the cuts on Dean's back which had Dean swaying and hissing with pain. He tried to catch Maggie's eye, to wordlessly plead with her to help him, but she was studiously avoiding his gaze.

He wasn't so far gone that he didn't understand the significance of Walter De Luise's words, especially combined with the sad story Maggie had been telling him moments earlier. The evil son of a bitch had been 'disciplining' his young nephew, probably for years, knowing that every beating, lash of the whip, burn or laceration would be miraculously healed by the boy's shapeshifting ability. Before meeting Walter, Dean might have thought the shapeshifter was a monster, but now he was starting to realise that maybe the biggest monster in that town was right behind him, and one hundred percent human.

And that was another thing. If Isaac Harrison had been chained up in this hellhole for several years, those recent unexplained deaths in Oxbow couldn't have been down to the shifter. Which meant that Dad and Sam were hunting something else, something unknown. Being out there hunting in blind ignorance was never good.

Not that this epiphany was of much help to Dean, stuck in Isaac's dungeon himself, not even able to scream. Dean blinked back the tears of frustration that mingled with the tears of pain.

Goddammit.

0xoxoxo

Sam pulled up outside the entrance to the small ER of Portishall community hospital and ran round to the passenger side of the truck. John nearly toppled out on top of him when he opened the door, but in a way that was helpful, as it meant Sam didn't have to haul his Dad out of there on his own. Gravity assisted up until Sam tried to straighten up and found John was virtually a dead weight draped over his still skinny shoulders.

"Crap. Come on, Dad, a little help here," Sam muttered as he half dragged, half carried the semi-comatose hunter towards the brightly lit automatic doors. Already he could feel the insidious fingers of panic niggling away at his edges, trying to find his loose threads and unravel him. The doors swished open and Sam was hit by that smell. Disinfectant. Death. Pain. He shuddered involuntarily, even while he was shouting at the desk staff for someone to take care of his Dad.

By the time the orderlies and nurses had sorted John Winchester onto a gurney and rushed him out of sight to x-ray and triage, and Sam had been ushered protesting in the opposite direction to have his head wound looked at, Sam was close to hyperventilating from a combination of his hospital phobia and worry about John. Even the very pretty young nurse who was stitching the gash in his forehead couldn't distract him, though Dean would have probably been taking her number and promising her a good time by now.

Dean. Now they were off the mountain, he should be able to get reception and call his errant brother. When the nurse finally finished, he barely took the time to thank her before rushing outside to grab the cell phone out of John's jacket. Just being out of the hospital meant he was breathing easier, though he knew he'd have to go back inside in a minute to find out what was happening with their Dad. The phone rang a couple of times then Dean's voice was on the line and Sam's relief was overwhelming.

"Dean! Where are you? You need to get over to Portishall hospital right away; Dad…what do you mean, you can't come…you have to get here Dean! It wasn't a skinwalker at all, just a grizzly bear, but it got Dad before he could kill it and it's all my fault…yes, I'm ok, just a knock on the head, but Dad's unconscious and they have taken him to x-ray now, said something about an MRI. Just…just dump whatever chick you've picked up and get over here, okay?"

Sam killed the call and glared at the blank display. Dean could be such a jerk sometimes. Sam fumed as he reluctantly made his way back inside the hospital, but even as his anger boiled, his brain was busy processing the conversation. So that when he heard the unmistakable rumble of the Impala's engine outside, it was the analytical side of him that was in the ascendant as his brother rushed into the ER. Dean came over and smiled at Sam, a tense, anxious smile, nothing out of keeping with the situation, not really.

Then Sam's name was being called, and the doctor was telling them John was okay, just a concussion, a couple of broken ribs and nasty compound fracture of the wrist, and how lucky they had been, did they not know that very grizzly had mauled two tourists to death out there on that trail only three weeks ago, and no doubt the warden of the reserve would be wanting to talk to them in the morning…

Sam just let the words wash over him, let Dean work the room with his easy charm like always – except it wasn't like always, at least not all the time.

So what exactly was wrong with this picture? Sam wasn't entirely sure, only that there was _something_, and that he couldn't shake a sense of unease that was nothing to do with his stupid phobia. Then Sam saw it. Occasionally, Dean seemed to stutter, to falter, like he wasn't sure what he should be doing next, or had forgotten how he was supposed to behave. Sam sat quiet and watched, all his fears absorbed in his primary function - research.

After half an hour, Dean finally wheedled his way into getting permission to see their father; though, the doctor told them, he was heavily sedated after having his wrist manipulated and set. Sam stood back from the bed, observing Dean - who sat too upright in the chair next to their father's side, as if he was unused to sitting down at all; who patted Dad's good hand awkwardly as if he thought that was what a good son did; who sprang to his feet after only a few minutes as if he had something more important to do than wait for their father, his freaking _hero_, to wake up. Sam frowned and Dean seemed to notice his scrutiny for the first time.

"Come on, kiddo, there's nothing we can do here, may as well go ho…back to the cabin, come back here in the morning."

Sam didn't acknowledge the verbal slip – since when had Dean called anywhere home? He gave the required little brother glare when Dean flicked his hand at the back of Sam's head, but he didn't stop processing.

"I'm not twelve, Dean," he said, automatically, as they headed outside and made for the Impala. Dean had unlocked the driver's side and was about to slide inside when Sam asked casually for the keys.

"Need something from the trunk, Dean," he said, holding out his hand. Dean shrugged and tossed the keys across the gleaming top. Sam lifted the false bottom of the trunk and stared at the weapons. So. Probably not a skinwalker, even though that was what they had originally come here to hunt, because right now those kills were looking pretty definitely like non supernatural grizzly bear kills. Plus skinwalkers generally only took animal form - though the Navajo did say if you looked into the eyes of one it could steal your body… But no. Sam didn't think so. That was too rare, and they were a long way from Navajo country.

A shifter, then. Sam quickly snatched up a silver dagger, slid it into his jacket. Fingers moving quick as Dean, he loaded the Taurus with silver bullets and tucked the gun down the back of his waistband. Quietly he re-covered the false bottom and grabbed a couple of bags of chips as cover. He folded himself into the shotgun seat and waited for the right moment to test his theory.

0xoxoxo

DeLuise had been gone for some time, Dean wasn't sure how long, when he thought he heard soft footsteps on the cellar stairs. He lifted his head with difficulty and tried to focus, but it was getting harder and harder. DeLuise had taken off the scold's bridle before he'd left Dean alone, still hung out to dry like a piece of washing on a line. There was no chance of Dean shouting any more profanities though, the damage had already been done. Dean felt as though his tongue was a foreign object filling his mouth. In fact he'd wished it really was, because then it wouldn't be a source of pain every time he tried to swallow past it. Not that he'd tried that often, as he was parched. He hadn't had anything to eat or drink since the bar last night – or was it longer ago than that? Dean wasn't sure of anything any more, other than he had a raging thirst, he was growing weaker and pain had become a constant companion. Part of him knew that the dank cellar was just as cold as before, but his body was aflame with fever, and sweat was trickling down his face, liquid he could ill afford to loose.

Wait. Didn't someone just come down into the cellar? Maybe Maggie'd had a change of heart and was going to get him out of here after all. Or maybe Sam, or Dad …

"Who's there?" Dean tried to say, but it came out more a slushy mumble.

Silence. After a moment, Dean let his head drop, concentrating on his breathing. He must have imagined it.

"You know that nobody is coming for you, don't you, Dean?"

The whisper came from behind him, making his heart leap in his chest with the shock. He twisted to try and see who it was, but the only reward he got was a fresh wave of agony as the abused muscles on his back protested at the movement.

"Your Dad doesn't need another grunt, he needs someone smart, like Sam. Someone quick and bright, not a dull little soldier like you. What use are you, anyway? Canon fodder, that's all you are. Worthless. Expendable."

"Shut up!"

"What was that, Dean? I can't quite make out what you are saying. Cat got your tongue? Oh no, that's right, it was the bridle that did that, wasn't it."

The laughter snickered, directionless, bouncing off the walls. Dean was panting now, he felt like he was suffocating. Anger mixed with a terrible fear and the knowledge buried deep down inside him that the words were true. He was good for nothing; chained up here he couldn't even do the one job he knew he was good at – looking after Sam.

"Look at me, Dean."

He tried to lift his head at the command. "Dad?"

John was standing in deep shadows, but Dean could see the expression on his father's face was an odd mix of disapproval and regret. Dean was shaking now, and couldn't stop, his trembling making the chains rattle.

"I'd expected better of you, son. I thought you'd have put up more of a fight than this sorry effort. I've gotta say, I'm disappointed. Still, at least I have Sammy. He's a good son, and he's gonna be a great hunter."

Dean made an inarticulate sound, fighting to maintain eye contact, even though that dark gaze was stabbing him through the heart.

"Sam doesn't need you, he's nearly seventeen now, and can take care of himself. He won't be coming for you, Dean. He knows you hold him back, keep him from being everything I know he can be. You are so needy, you smother him.

"So I've told DeLuise he can keep you here. You're no use to me. You broke so easy, Dean. I'm ashamed I ever called you a Winchester."

Dean's body shuddered uncontrollably, as if every one of John's words were a bucket of ice water washing over him, and his head drooped as blackness seeped into every atom of his being. He vaguely heard voices shouting, but he ignored them. It didn't matter any more. Dad was right about him. He was broken, insignificant, he was a burden and it was pointless to pretend any more. It was better for everyone, better for Sam, if he just…let go.

0x0x0x0

Sam couldn't believe his eyes when a reluctant Isaac led him down the cellar steps and the obscene torture chamber was revealed. It had taken Sam nearly an hour of threatening and cajoling to persuade the shifter to admit he was not Dean, to return (in a gut churning display Sam _never_ wanted to see again) to his own form and to show Sam where Dean was being held prisoner.

The chamber stank of metal and sweat and fear. Sam could barely take it all in. The winches with their tangle of iron chains, the stained benches and walls with manacles built in, the boxes overflowing with a variety of instruments the purposes of which he didn't want to even guess at, and everywhere the glint of silver. Isaac's thin shoulders were stiff with tension as he held himself tightly, avoiding touching anything. But all Sam's attention was taken by the terrible sight of his unconscious brother, clothed only in his own blood, hanging with outstretched arms in a kneeling crucifixion pose, like some parody of a medieval martyred saint.

Sam's first touch was tentative. Dean was so still and pale under the dirt and the dark blood that was staining his shredded back, Sam was deathly afraid of what he would find. He pressed his fingers against Dean's cold neck, only daring to breathe again when he finally felt a slow, thready pulse. Sam's own heart kick-started itself with relief, and he sprang into action.

"Help me get him down," he commanded Isaac, but the boy seemed frozen to the floor. "The winch," Sam pointed. "You must know how it works."

"I can't touch it; uncle Walter has laid silver traps for me all over, and it burns," Isaac was close to tears and Sam had no patience with it. It was hard for Sam to believe the shifter and he were the same age, Isaac seemed so frail and young. He knew Isaac had been through years of abuse from the story the boy had told him after he had threatened the shifter with the silver knife and forced him back into his own shape, but sympathy could wait, Dean couldn't. Dean was his first, his only, concern right now. Before he could get really angry with the kid, Maggie appeared on the stairs.

"Isaac can't help, but I can."

Everything seemed to speed up then as Sam's urgency infected everyone. Maggie spun this wheel and that wheel, and Dean collapsed into Sam's waiting arms limp as a rag doll. Maggie dug out the keys to the manacles and Sam released his brother's wrists and ankles, taking off his own over-shirt and tearing it up to bind the red-raw flesh there. There was nothing Sam could do about the inflamed mass of wounds on Dean's back without making things worse – he could see that infection was already raging in many of the deeper cuts and he didn't want to exacerbate that by touching the open wounds with dirty hands. Dean was going to need some serious antibiotics.

It was Maggie who noticed and cried out a warning when Walter DeLuise came down into the chamber to investigate the commotion, but it was Isaac who finally woke up enough to do something about that. Isaac grabbed the Taurus out of Sam's waistband and stood his ground while DeLuise berated him, then begged for mercy when the Harrisons forced him into his own perverted contraption. The man only shut up when Maggie threatened to confine him in the scold's bridle and Sam was consumed with a new rage when he realised that ancient instrument of torture had been used on Dean. It was Maggie and Isaac who stopped Sam from killing DeLuise – because he would have. Snuffed the evil torturing bastard out like a candle flame for what he'd done to Dean.

0x0x0x0

It was Sam's voice that broke through Dean's fever dream, Sam's hands warm and strong as they gripped him tight and lowered him down. He was marginally aware there were other people talking but it was only Sam he could focus on, his little brother's scrunched up anxious face was the only think he could see.

"S'm," he said, uncertain. Where was Dad? John Winchester had been there moments ago, hadn't he? Had he left in disgust after realising what a failure Dean was?

"Yes, Dean, it's me. I gotcha, it's going to be okay."

Dean gripped Sam's arm with surprising strength. "D'd?"

"He's okay too, Dean, just concussed again and got a few broken bones, nothing serious. Man, you won't believe it, there was no skinwalker out there at all, it was just a big old grizzly. And the only shiftr here is Isaac, and he's been locked up for years by that monstrous Deluise guy, who'd have thought?"

Dean let Sam's words wash over him as his brother babbled on. He couldn't make any sense of it all - because Sam seemed to be saying John was in hospital somewhere, when Dean was sure Dad'd been right here, talking to him only moments before Sam had turned up.

And that right there was something wonderful that Dean had given up hoping for. Sam was here, had come for him after all. Dean didn't care about DeLuise, or Isaac the shifter, or the fact that the burning in his back seemed to have taken over his whole body, because Sam was holding him tight - as if his little brother was just as scared of losing Dean as Dean had been of losing Sam.

Dad had been wrong. Sam cared. Sam had come back for him. Sam would always be there for him, just like he'd always be there for Sam. Because family was the only thing that really mattered. Even Isaac and Maggie understood that.

Dean closed his eyes and let all the tension drain away.

0x0x0x0

Now, safely ensconced back in the Portishall community hospital, Sam sat at Dean's bedside, his attention divided between watching Dean's face in its tranquil, morphine induced sleep and staring at the sheet of paper on his lap. He looked at the sprawling signature on the bottom of the form and felt utterly calm.

He had thought all this time it was hospitals he was afraid of, but now, sitting here waiting for his father and his brother to wake up, he understood. It wasn't the place, with its smells, or the cruddy furniture, or the colour of the walls, or even the sick and dying people. It was the knowledge lodged deep in his heart that it was just a matter of time before he would be sitting in one of these places while an over-worked, sympathetic-faced doctor told him that his brother wasn't going to wake up.

Not today, not tomorrow, but sooner or later it would happen, and Sam couldn't be there to hear those words. That was what had his heart racing and his breath closing up in his throat every time he walked through a hospital door, and that was why he had finally found the courage to find a way out.

He folded the application form, running a nail along the creases in the paper before sliding it into the envelope. Dean might call it running away, and Dad would be mad as Hell, but today, right now, Sam felt at peace at last.

0x0x0x0


End file.
